Too “Curried” for Words!
Who said that only the east aped the west? Take a deep breath and you’ll find the aroma of curry drifting in from the west. Hard to believe?
Prateek Gupta
24.10.2009
Food
There are some things in the world which bear the Indian stamp all over them; one of them being the Curry. The origin of the word and the concept has come about from the South Indian languages where it actually means a side dish or an accompanying dish to be consumed with the main cereal (generally rice).
Recently the concept of curry has been a great amount of concern to me, specially the demographic and contextual usage of the word especially in the virtual realm of things. I have a strong feeling that the next attempt to hijack Indian traditions after Yoga & Basmati rice would be a patent filling for the Curry. The word has become such a critical part of the English language and culture that beyond some point of time we would just forget that the ‘Curry’ was an Indian thing, to begin with. Do a Google search or any other online engine word check and we would find more westerners talking about the curry than the Indian talking about it.
The curry has become such a fad in the western world that people not only love eating it, but have been so obsessed with it that they have started using Curry as their last name. I mean this is the limit – I can’t fathom visiting a country and adapting my surname to the delicacies there! Did I ever start calling myself Prateek Pasta or Prateek Steak Burger then why do we have an Adam with Curry as his last name? And lo and behold, he is also the second most prominent search result according to the Google search engine after the wikipedia !! Now isn’t it amazing that one of the most delicious Indian dishes is being hijacked by using it as a last name.
On doing a search on the keyword ‘curry’ we get through an online shopping for appliances, laptops and televisions, an art store, a home page of Adam Curry but not a single recipe. This is what the world has come to; the Indian delicacy has attained unusual standards where we might get electronics, video jockeys, art and a plethora of other things, yet not a single version of making an authentic Indian curry.
So the next time you smell a delicious curry and put a spoonful in your mouth just pause and think – you might be savouring an anglicized patented delicacy. I say, savour the Indian curry while it lasts!
Prateek Gupta
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[image courtesy: http://flic.kr/p/5bg5wJ]
